Mark Briscoe Explains His Hatred of MJF

During a recent interview with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp, AEW star Mark Briscoe explained his hatred for his onscreen rival, reigning AEW World Champion Maxwell Jacob Freidman (MJF) ahead of this weekend’s Steel Cage Match. Below are some highlights from Fightful:

Mark Briscoe on His Hatred of MJF

“I think it’s one of the things that’s just like too obvious to not happen. It’s like Flair and Dusty, you know what mean? It’s like blue-collar, white-collar. There’s this conceited prick versus, I tried my best to be a humble, hardworking man. So like water and oil, where it’s so different that we got the clash. It’s got ‘we got to see what happens when you put these two in the same room at the same time and see what happens. Give them both a microphone. Let him say stuff to him. Let him say stuff to him. See how it pans out. Let him get in the ring with each other. See what they can do.’ If he’s on fire, I would not piss on him to put him out, I promise you I would not. I’d pull my phone out and I’d take videos, and I’d hoot and holler because I can’t stand the man. I’ve never had a hatred for a man like I have for MJF. That’s one of the milestones in my AEW journey was when I crossed paths with him because I was having such a good time. I really was. I was having such a good time, and I can still have a good time, but whenever I see his face, man, it just goes out the window. All I feel is I want to inflict pain on this man. I want to eliminate this man.”

On Being Unable To Eliminate MJF

“Then at the same time, it’s now been brought to I can’t eliminate this man, ‘cause I can get him all the way to the to the edge, but not quite eliminate him yet because I might be able to make some money off of beating this man up over and over and over again. So we kids to feed, mouths to feed. So I don’t think I can totally eliminate him, even though I just got to get out what I got to get out because I ain’t had closure. I beat him in that tables and tacks match. It felt really, really, really good, and he went on his way. I was hoping that he’d be gone for good. But he came back and now he’s the champ.”

On MJF Having the Power to Alter His Brain

“That’s the crazy part. My focus is not the AEW World title in and of itself. My focus is inflicting pain and damn near destroying MJF. But it’s crazy, the side effect of this is that I might end up being the AEW World Champion because I already beat the man once. We’re gonna do our thing in the cage match and I plan on beating him again. I don’t know. He changed my brain chemistry. MJF has changed my entire brain chemistry from where now the minute that he enters my thoughts, my mood changes. So I’ll have to apologize if I get cranky here.”

Team Briscoe (Mark Briscoe, Orange Cassidy, Roderick Strong, Kyle O’Reilly, Konosuke Takeshita, and Darby Allin) takes on Team MJF (MJF, Kevin Knight, Kyle Fletcher, Jake Doyle, Kazuchika Okada, and Andrade El Ídolo) in a Steel Cage Match this weekend at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door. If Briscoe’s team wins, Briscoe will earn a title shot against MJF.

AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door takes place on Sunday, June 28. It will be held at the SAP Center in San Jose, California. It will be broadcast live on pay-per-view.